Poda women’s group, Indonesia

Description

This coffee is wet-hulled, with only the ripest cherries being hand-picked then fermented for 24 hours to develop earthy, wild flavours.

Poda takes a different approach to Sumatran coffee, and provides a radically different model for supply stream relationships in the coffee industry. Poda sources coffee only from Dairi regency, from the three districts of Sitinjo, Sumbul, and Sidikalang. Farm sizes are small, with most coffee plantings covering less than one hectare.

Poda is led by Samuel Sihombing, a former pastor who has become a community leader and coffee visionary in Sidikalang. Poda works with farmers to organise groups, including the women’s farmer groups that contributed to this coffee, providing a platform for agronomy training to improve coffee quality. Key is improving financial management so the groups are often built around a community savings and loan group, giving the farmers more financial autonomy and breaking cycles of debt owed to middlemen. Poda buys directly from these groups; the farmers receive a higher price than market rate for their coffee, and a part of this increased margin goes into the community savings and loan fund, providing low-cost financing for the members.

Poda works with Goodel Indonesia, a social enterprice and export operation that works to provide high-quality traceable coffee to the international market. Working with Goodel has allowed Poda to improve facilities and coffee quality assessment capabilities, secure financing to reach exportable scale, and identfying buyers. They have a profit-sharing agreement based upon an open-book policy regarding the costs of production, processing, and exporting so both parties benefit equally from working together.